BG3: oh, hey there

Next up: the party went to pick up the Harpers' treasure and Raphael ( Read more... )

BG3: in which we see Gale's flawless judgment

Speaking of getting an offer from ( Read more... )

Tumblr crosspost (12 August 2020)

I’m alternating between grad school stuff and fandom stuff today, so it’s like—

if you have made over five thousand dollars in income from a publicly-traded company or have over five thousand dollars in stock from a publicly-traded company … oh no, Bryke’s leaving the ATLA project and the announcement is honestly really harsh, so things are looking bad … right, okay, or if you have a combined total of five thousand dollars or more from both income and stocks then you need to report it to your institution and … that makes me think about Disney SW, and I love a lot of it and was glad that Anakin FINALLY made it into the sequels but what does balancing the Force even mean at this point? like—fine, the 2011 regulations shift the bulk of responsibility for navigating COIs to institutions

#me: i'll take a break from the income and stocks we have to read about as PHD STUDENTS IN LITERATURE WHAT EVEN IS THAT #and see what's going on—oh #okay #given that i love both atla /and/ lok this is like... doubly bad #*goes back to stocks*

Tumblr crosspost (13 August 2020)

An anon said:

sometimes it feels almost like people have to justify leia being anakin's daughter to themselves, prove she's really a skywalker, so in doing so they erase the fact that she was raised by someone who was tangentially connected to her biological father at best, as well as padme and luke's canonical traits, like they need to prove that leia is the "real" skywalker where luke isn't

I replied:

I got this a long time ago, but I’ve recently been looking for Skywalker posts and yeah, I tend to feel the same way.

Does Leia resemble Anakin in some ways? Sure. But their similarities operate on meta rather than in-story logic. In-story, Anakin is not her father in any meaningful sense and has almost no impact on her except as Darth Vader. He is, however, Luke’s father—Luke and everyone around him, including Owen and Beru, persistently identify him that way.

And if we’re going with meta logic, the affinity between Anakin and Luke underpins Luke’s entire character arc in the OT, which makes very little sense without it. If Luke is just naturally pure and soft™ by contrast to Anakin-Leia, then what is his struggle even about? Why does Luke’s initial desire to be like Anakin culminate not in rejecting the terrible reality of who Anakin is but claiming to actually be like him? I just … why?!?!

I get the frustration with how thoroughly Leia is sidelined from the Skywalker A-plot (partly but not wholly an artifact of the retcon) and the drive to integrate her into it. I get seeing similarities between Leia and Anakin and finding them significant in a sort of literary sense. But the attempt to make Leia out to be the ~real~ Skywalker and Luke into Padmé 2.0 ignores a lot about how Luke and Leia relate to their respective parents and how their traits and character arcs develop and resolve.

(A long way of saying “yep, this!”)

Tumblr crosspost (13 August 2020)

brightlady-lise on Tumblr asked:

What about an AU where Earnil has a daughter rather than a son and she grows up to kick the Witch King's behind.

I replied:

Wow. I love Éowyn’s moment, but just taking out the Witch-king like that, in that era, would be a great moment (and good for Middle-earth! but also, cool). And tbh I find Eärnur dull and vaguely unlikable as he is, but Warrior Princess Eärnurmë who’s had to claw her way into even being in the right position to take out the Witch-king could be super interesting, if it happened in a context that wasn’t kind of inherently doomed like Minas Morgul.

I do wonder how she would end up there, and how Eärnur’s cheerfully single life would work for the last princess of the house of Anárion. I do very definitely headcanon Eärnur (and Boromir after him) as 100% ace, so … hmm. It’d be complicated, but still interesting!